


Poker Night

by Sheffield



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield
Summary: I occasionally scour the internet for Lost Works of Mine and was fortunate enough to come across this one. Thanks to the anonymous heroes who saved so many stories from the wreck of geocities, long ago. Please let me know if you find anything else of mine.Anyway, this is a little something which was originally marked "Warning: Rated R for violence and language; contains characters with racist, sexist, and homophobic views."It's in two parts: you could treat the first part as a standalone action adventure, but all the interesting psychological stuff is in part two.





	1. Chapter 1

The gag cut into the corners of his mouth, and the blindfold was tied so tight around his head it was giving him a thumping headache, but otherwise he was in pretty good shape. So far.

He was sitting on a wooden chair, hands tied together behind his back with plastic riot cuffs. He felt cautiously at his bindings but he wasn't going to get his wrists out of them in a hurry. But all that held him in the chair were ropes around his ankles, and it was the relative position of rope, ankle and chairleg that was occupying his mind while he waited. This was not how he had planned on spending poker night.

His capture came back to him in a swift sensory/memory/emotion flash that brought bile to his throat and burning rage into his heart. Dammit, he should have been prepared! He struggled a few seconds, resisting the memory of Sandburg's voice saying "breathe, man" in his head, but then willed himself to respond. Rage was like fear; useless, here, now, except to waste his energies, sap his strength. He would deal with these people soon enough. When the time came. But until then he needed to be strong and to husband his strength, and to do that he needed to be calm, and to do that, well, the simplest way was to let the Sandburg-loop inside his head finish its course.

But, dammit, he should have known, should have been warned. Only two days ago, Sandburg had been approached at Rainier by three men who came towards him from a limo parked across his path. But his inventive partner had taken one look, turned on his heels and run towards the football field, yelling "Call 911!" at anyone in his path. There had been thirteen calls logged before Jim had made it out of the Cascade PD building, and he had no idea how many more while he was on his frantic way. The football team included at least three of Sandburg's Anthro 105 study group and so Jim had had to show his credentials AND have his ID checked by a cellphone call to Simon before the outer ring of man-mountain would let him near enough for Sandburg to vouch for him as a rescuer. He had promptly - and, with the assistance of two grinning teenage hulks, bodily - incarcerated Sandburg in a safehouse and begun to investigate. But goddamnit, why hadn't he been more careful himself?

Rage, chagrin, and good old fashioned guilt warred briefly in his gut and he reached awkwardly for that calm still centre of himself, just out of reach.  
As if waiting for his resumption of the exercise, the imaginary Sandburg voice continued calmly on cue; "Breathe in ... slow... good. Hold. Out...slow...slow...good."

In time to the words, once more in tune with his inner self, he breathed long, slow, calming breaths, and waited for an opportunity to present itself. Something nagging at the back of his mind gradually came forwards. As he calmed, as he breathed, as he centred himself, he also found he was getting information about the room where he was being held. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that it was a large empty high ceilinged space. Not a warehouse; maybe a gymnasium, something like that. He was positioned at the centre of the short wall, about six feet away from the wall itself, and in front of him was an empty space, about the size of a basketball court, with large double doors that led to the outside world directly ahead of him at the far end of the court. The light - and, in spite of the impenetrable blackness of the blindfold, somehow, he knew there was light - was coming from windows to his right. Just as to his left, he knew (but wondered how he knew) there were wall bars.

And behind and to either side of him there were silent, vigilant guards, standing at a parade rest back against the wall.

Sandburg had worked on this stuff with him, after Golden had blinded him, and then again, later, when they had both recovered. He had resisted yet another way for him to feel like a freak but Sandburg had used his full repertoire - food bribery, pouting, puppy dog eyes, a brief paperwork-strike which had included denial of access to the Miraculous Sandburg-Zone Filing System and Spoil-Heap - and, in the end, had just worn down the Immovable Ellison Object with the Irresistible Sandburg Force of nature.

So Jim knew, theoretically, that he could pick up positional cues from echoes, soundwaves reflected from objects, the way that bats and dolphins could. And he also knew, more importantly, that it was one of the more reliable uses of his senses and one of the least likely to tip him into a zone if he concentrated too hard. But he could only do it reliably when deprived of his sight, and so even Sandburg had, in the end, agreed it was of limited practical use. Boy, was he going to get it when Sandburg heard about this.

Sandburg was safe, free and clear, locked up in the safe house under Simon's supervision. The fierce joy in the knowledge he had kept his guide safe warmed him for a moment, like a fine malt in the throat.

And then the guilt that was the dark side of the joy hit him like the same malt coming right back up as thin and bitter gall. The limo had pulled up next to him, and he had looked inside. But all he had felt as he, resignedly, surrendered, was relief. Relief that the frightened face looking back at him wasn't Sandburg. But only his father.

***  
He heard his father approaching the minute they brought him up to the outside door. It was a slender chance, at best, and depended largely on predicting his father's reaction. Sandburg would, he knew with quiet confidence, have run towards him. But with his father, it would be a better move if he ran away. Would his father obey orders in a crisis like a good soldier? Or use his brains and guts and initiative like Sandburg? Or, most likely, freeze like a civilian? He could work with any one of the three possible reactions, but he needed to guess right, which.  
"Jimmy?"

He flexed his ankles surreptitiously. The ropes had been loose enough to work down from shin to ankle and he was ready for the moment...

...That odd sense, like radar, meant he could "see", despite the blindfold, that the doors at the far end of the room had been flung open and his father was walking towards him, flanked by just one guard. The two men behind him hadn't moved. He would never get a better chance.

He stood up, tilting the chair backwards so that the chairleg simply slid through the rope, freeing his left ankle and taking the rope around his right ankle down to a loose noose around his right toe. A kick sent the chair flying at the end of this unlikely toe-catapult, and the bizarre weapon hit his father's guard full in the face. If it had been Sandburg, he knew that at this point his partner would have run towards him; get either the blindfold or the cuffs off of him, or both, and they would have had a fighting chance. But if his father would just do the sensible thing and run for it...

He took out the first of the rear guards with a mule kick to the groin as the man moved forwards. The second was running, and his spider-sense wasn't as clear when faced with sudden movement. Hands grasped his shoulders, pushed him down, and he ducked forwards, trying to break the man's nose with a headbut...

"My God, Jimmy, stop! Are you all right? Get that thing off of him." His father's voice? He pulled the movement at the last possible millisecond and felt hands, behind him, fumble at the blindfold. His father's face looked at him, inches from his own.

"Stop it, Jimmy. It's all right. No-one's going to hurt you. We just need you to listen."  
Oh my god... his father wasn't a victim but an accomplice...  
"They're good people, Jimmy. And they deserve a hearing. I want you to listen to them."  
"That's all we're asking, detective," the other man added silkily, brushing himself down. Jim nodded fractionally, looking at his father. How had he got sucked into some paramilitary group? And how the hell was Jim going to rescue him? He knew some guys who'd done "de-programming", sure, for kids who'd been suckered into cults. Come to that, he had an in with the people at Quantico who deprogrammed former POWs - but could he put his father through all that? And could the old man stand up to it, if he did?

They undid the gag and he turned aside, trying to spit out the wadded material they'd used to pack his mouth but there was too much of it and his mouth was too dry, he couldn't manage it without help. The man behind him helped and his father turned away, face wrinkled up in distaste.

"Thanks," he said mildly, trying to gauge what he was up against.  
"I'm sorry about... all this," the man with his father said, using a vague gesture to encompass Jim's kidnapping, the paramilitary trappings - the suborning of his own father. "I, personally, would have preferred to approach you openly, as befits men of honour, but..."  
"You always were a stubborn one, Jimmy," his father said, smiling. "Never could get you to listen to me." Jim felt faintly sick.  
"Be that as it may... Detective Ellison, it can't have escaped your notice that we are becoming a minority in our own country. You have only to look at your own department, mongrelised and weakened as it is. You have some crazy bitch carrying a gun as if she could back you up yet she doesn't even pretend to be an American! Political correctness gone mad! Half your workforce are black as the ace of spades, and the rest... foreigners, weaklings, perverts - your own partner is all three, and a bastard to boot."  
"You buy in to this hogwash, dad?"  
"Oh, come on, Jim. The man is just saying what everyone knows, deep down, but we're too caught up in political correctness to say it out loud. I've always said, you should be in charge of Major Crimes, not Banks. I'm sure Banks is a good man, in his way, for a..."  
Jim's blue eyes were level and clear and his father didn't quite dare to look him in the eyes and say it.  
"So what do you good, white, all-American heroes want from me?"  
"Jimmy, listen to the man. I know your instincts are good; you were brought up right. And I know you have a history with these people. But put your ... prejudices ... aside for a moment and look at it with fresh eyes. All they want is to correct an injustice. Imagine the British had jailed the Founding Fathers. Would it have been right to leave them there? All we're looking to do is to get someone out of jail who should never have been there in the first place."  
The other man looked at him assessingly. "We want you to get Garrett Kincaid out of jail."

His face must have showed his contempt for the whole idea. Funny, that. He thought his poker face was better. But the idea, the idea that his father actually thought he would go along with this if they only sat him down and "explained" it to him properly...

He saw the other man read his answer in his eyes and saw his father instantly degraded from follower to game piece. And then their hands were on him again and he was being hustled through the door at the back of the gym, his father gripped by another of the guards and hustled with him, protesting loudly. There was a hole in the ground - an old storage tank? It reeked of old gasoline or oil. They had the hatch already open and they pushed him and he fell, landing like a cat, looking up at his captors.

There was someone else already in the pit, someone bound and gagged and blindfolded, as he had been. He moved, awkward, his own wrists still bound behind him, and helped Brian Rafe off with the blindfold and gag.  
"As you see," the terrorist's voice came, calmly, from above, "we have the means to secure your obedience. Several means, in fact." He dropped something at Jim's feet. A badge. Simon's badge. And it was followed by another, and then another. Brown's. Connor's. He looked up at them, enraged. "Oh, and let's not forget this."  
Something else landed at his feet. Something soft. Hair? A hank of hair. Human hair. A ponytail of hair, cut off in one brutal swipe, the distinctive metal clasp Sandburg had used on it that morning still holding it together.

***

"...blood," Sandburg was saying.

Something important, something about blood. He was lying down, he knew that. And Sandburg wasn't there, not really. And it was dark, and wet. His hands were trapped underneath him, but his head was propped up on something warm.  
It still bothered him, who was bleeding? Where? He opened his mouth to ask but then he realised he was lying on a concrete floor with his head propped up on Brian Rafe's lap. Rafe was kind of... stroking his head? This was a really weird way to wake up. He tried to get up and panicked when he couldn't move, but then he saw that Rafe's hands were caught together at the wrists with riot cuffs and he remembered: Kincaid's men. Ah. He couldn't move because he was lying on his back with his own hands cuffed together underneath him.

He must have lost time. Zoned on something - that smell of gasoline was disgusting - and Rafe had brought him out of it. Must have thought he'd had a seizure or something.

Why was he dreaming about Sandburg, about blood?  
He remembered now. The shields, the hank of hair. The bastards had got the whole poker night gang: Simon, Rafe, Brown, Connor and Sandburg. And wanted him to get Kincaid out of prison.

"How long?" he said hoarsely. The expression of hope on Rafe's face was heartbreaking.  
"Jim! You're awake? I didn't know what to do."  
"How long was I out?"  
"Don't know. They took my watch along with everything else. Could be an hour, maybe two, I guess. Jim, I'm so sorry..."

"Don't be, Rafe, none of this is your fault." He struggled to lift his legs, bending his knees, so he could slide the cuffs down under his buttocks and then past knees and ankles to bring his arms around to the front as Rafe must have. He observed, distantly, that both he and Rafe had been stripped and dressed in grey utilitarian coveralls. Rafe had this weird look on his face, like he was going to pass out or throw up or burst into tears or something. Jim stretched himself and flexed his knees and elbows, checked all the moving parts still worked. He was OK. Time to get going.

"So how did they get you? Do they really have Simon and the others? Come on, detail."  
"You haven't seen them?"  
"No - you?"  
"Not for hours. They split us up between two cars. I was with Henri and Connor, but Simon, Daryl and Sandburg were in the other one."  
"Daryl?"  
"Yeah. That's how they got us: got to Simon first. Once they tied us up they blindfolded us all and loaded us up. We drove maybe a couple of hours and then we stopped, they dragged me out, and dropped me down this hole. I haven't seen anyone since, until you fell on my head."  
"Yeah, well, sorry about that... they want us to get Garrett Kincaid out of prison. I'm guessing they want to use the two of us because we're the only ones who fit their stereotype of 'cop': white, male, and not Sandburg."

***

There was a bottle of water, small mercy, but nothing else. No food. No light, no heat, no sounds from outside: nothing but their desultory conversation and the smell of their unwashed bodies. No facilities: they settled on, not a corner since there were none in the circular pit, but a space, to use as a latrine, until finally the stench of their own wastes overpowered the smell of the disinfectant that covered up the stench of old oil. Old blood, too, somewhere under the thick layers of stench, from who knows what nameless prisoner thrown into this pit before them. In the end, Jim's control over the input from his senses cracked and he gagged on the stench and threw up. And then gagged on the stench of that, and threw up again, which set Rafe off in sympathy, until they were both practically inside-out and as wretched as a mortal man can be. And then it just - was. The atmosphere in which they lived, until they stopped noticing it at all.  
They were both cold and shocky, and there was something weird about the way Rafe was acting. Quiet and shaky, Jim practiced in the darkness with this new "spider sense", his picture of the world gradually growing clearer until he could see Rafe's face, stolidly silent in spite of his fears for their partners, their friends. To Jim the world of darkness gradually became crystal clear. Not just in the way your eyes get used to the dark. This was a whole extra sense; extrapolated sight, with depth perception and the ability to see round corners, through the lid over their pit as if it were translucent. It was like having a 3D black and white TV. With X ray vision. Way cool, he thought with a wry grin, imagining what Sandburg would say when he told him.

The lid was cranked open and out of the sudden, startling light, a rope was tossed down, its end knotted into a loop.  
"Ellison," they said. There was nothing to be gained by refusing. He put his foot into the loop, grasped the rope with cuffed hands and let them haul him smoothly to the surface.

"This is how it's going to go down." Jim felt his own pulse rate rise at the sight, the smell, the sound of their leader. His senses tagged this one, marked him out. If it came to fighting, this neck was the one his hands itched to break.  
"We have taken your clothes and your companion's to be cleaned. In a few hours we will come for Detective Rafe and take him to the showers. He will be allowed to wash and shave, and given something to eat. His clothes will be returned to him, and then he will be blindfolded and placed in a car with one of my men. You will then be removed from the pit, taken to the showers and supervised while you, too, are cleaned up and fed and then placed in a second car, also dressed as you were, also blindfolded and also accompanied. You will be driven for approximately two hours and then the cars will stop, your blindfold will be removed and you will join detective Rafe in the first car. At this point you will be 100 yards from the Federal Penitentiary, just out of range of their perimeter security cameras. You will be provided with entirely real, verifiable documents releasing Garrett Kincaid into your custody for a Grand Jury appearance in Cascade. You will put him in the back of your car, treating him with the utmost respect. You will drive half a mile, following the second car containing my men. When they indicate, you will pull over, release your prisoner, and then remain in the parked car as we drive away. After thirty minutes you may drive off and return to your homes. The hostages will be released unharmed 24 hours later. Do you fully understand?"

"Unacceptable."

The terrorist looked at him, as astonished as if a rock had spoken.  
"Ellison, did I confuse you by suggesting that any of this is negotiable?"  
"I need some assurance my people are still alive now, before I agree to go ahead. And we'll exchange hostages face to face."

The man turned his back and Jim looked assessingly at him, the ramrod straight back, the salt and pepper hair, the spit-shined shoes. Military to the bone: so how had he gone so wrong? Jim listened carefully for the sounds of the man's body, noticing his breathing, heartrate, perspiration all increase. Stressed, but not over the edge.

"You're a hard bastard, Ellison, I'll give you that. You've already seen what we can do, and you're still pushing?"  
"Shoot his bitch," one of the others advised, grinning. Jim's face was carved from granite. The terrorist looked at him from slate-grey eyes, long and hard, weighing his options.  
"You don’t get to see anyone. If you want proof they’re still alive, I’ll have one of them write you a note on today’s newspaper. But I will have them driven to the handover point. You stop the car and walk away from Commander Kincaid, as my men walk away from the people-carrier full of your men. You drive off with them, we drive off with the Commander. Is *that* acceptable?"  
Jim nodded briefly. So now he knew. A bomb in the car? Or just a quiet bullet for him and Rafe as they opened up a truck full of corpses. Either way, Jim knew one thing. If they got Garrett Kincaid out of prison, they were all dead.

***

They threw him back into the pit and he landed like a cat - well, like a cat with its hands tied might land if it was desperately trying to avoid landing in the latrine. Rafe’s grip on his arm steadied him and he quickly explained what was planned, as the lid cranked shut and darkness descended.

"Hey," Jim added cheerfully, "at least we let in a little air."

Rafe, thinking himself unseen in the darkness, gave him that Look again - the one he was starting to capitalise, the desperate, wary one where Rafe acted like Jim was the bad guy… or like he was trying not to cry. Funny, but he had always assumed Rafe was in the "big boys don’t cry" camp rather than a Sandburgian "reach out with your feelings" type. Well, well, you never can tell.

He found himself an almost-dry space to sit, and leaned back, letting the spider-sense gradually unfold until he had the pit encompassed as thoroughly as if it was undergoing sentinel-sight examination in the glare of a spotlight. And, as before, as soon as it settled down he found it blossomed outwards, so he could "see" through the hatch, the walls.

"Jim," Rafe said suddenly, but he didn’t think he could listen to any more of the man’s anecdotes about his forefathers.  
"Hey Rafe," he interrupted, "I think I have an idea."  
Oh god, had the man actually wiped away a tear? He didn’t have time to deal with this.  
"You know I was in some… well, less than public operations, back in the military."  
"Black Ops," Rafe confirmed, starting to take an interest.  
"Well, I might have a way out of here for us."  
"What do I do?"  
"I’m going to do this thing… well, Sandburg says it’s a kind of meditation. I think that’s bullshit, but who knows: it’s something like that, I guess. I need you to be really quiet while I do my thing, but I also need you to keep track of the time. Because if I don’t do it right, I can find myself in a place I can’t get out of, in my head; you understand?"  
"Some kind of martial arts thing?"  
"Kinda."  
He had kept it vague enough, he thought, that Rafe stood a reasonable chance of recognising a zone and maybe bringing him out of it, without broadcasting to the world what he had done.  
"What do I do if you don’t come out of it? For that matter, how will I recognise it?"  
"In an hour or so, if I’m not moving, just do what you did before - put a hand on me, talk to me. Ultimately, if that doesn’t work, try hitting me. Gently! I’ll be pretty wired by then and I don’t want to hurt you by mistake."  
"OK, I can do that."  
"Get hold of your wrist and find your pulse: count the heartbeats to help you keep track of time. Call each one a second and use your fingers to keep count. Don’t worry too much about accuracy: but don’t start checking too soon."  
"OK."

He could "see" as clear as day that having something to do perked Rafe up no end. He lost that vague "my dog died" expression and started looking like a detective, positioning himself by Jim’s foot so he could find him in the squalid darkness but not interfere with this picture of dangerous martial meditation Jim had painted.

Satisfied, Jim leaned back against the curve of the wall and, for the first time, gave his 3D radar, his spider sense, free rein. He could "see" - damn, but he just didn’t have a word for it. Radar? Radar, he decided, labelling it decisively. He could radar easily around the pit, identify every hair on Rafe’s head, every worry line on his face. The construction of the hatch above their heads was as clear to him as if it had been made of glass. He could see the bar that held it in place, up above, and he could sense the shape of the building beyond.

…and, he realised, the room behind the wall, the gym where he had first been held. And since he could radar through and around and somehow past objects, well, then why should he stop for a wall, a door? His senses encompassed the buildings complex where they were and moved outwards, further and further, Rafe’s hand on his ankle giving him enough of an anchor to remind him where he was and stop him losing it.

There was a perimeter fence and some wooded ground in one direction, call it the back, of the complex. A flat open space - a parade ground? - to the "front". He followed that direction, examining the buildings beyond the parade ground. Some kind of residential block - bunkhouse, mess hall, showers… He examined the showers carefully; if he and Rafe were to be taken there, it might prove to be the place they made their move. Possibilities, definitely.

But where were the others? None of this would work if he couldn’t find Sandburg… there. A small block beyond at the far end of the campus, set up like an old-style sherriff’s office from a western movie. There was a small office with a man on duty, leaning back in his chair, feet up on the desk, magazine in hand. Porno mag, from the noises he was making. Useless as a guard, anyway. There was a rack of guns chained behind him on the wall and, hanging next to it, a bunch of keys. Jim reached out with his spider sense to get a picture of what was beyond the guard, behind the door.

Yes! At last! There were four cells facing each other, two by two; each had three brick walls and was fronted by bars like cages. In the first two, facing each other, were Sandburg and Connor. Sandburg had a mean-looking black eye and his roughly-shorn hair stood out from his head like a dandelion, but he seemed otherwise OK. He was sitting cross-legged on a low bunk, talking away nineteen to the dozen, his hands moving too quickly for the spider sense to radar a clear picture of them.

Across from his partner, pacing her cage like a tiger, was Connor. Jim couldn’t get a clear radar of her because she was moving too fast but she was moving fluidly and must, he thought, be reasonably OK.

Further on, next to Connor, Henri Brown lay flat on his bunk, a picture of misery. His arm was tied up in a makeshift sling. He seemed to have taken a bullet on the shoulder, and from the looks of him it probably broke his arm on its way out too. And in the fourth cell, facing Henri and next door to Sandburg, were Simon and Daryl Banks. Daryl was lying on the bunk, bleeding from a bullet wound in his side, and his father was sitting on the edge of the bed, doing his best to stem the bleeding with a torn up t-shirt.

Jim pulled back, noting his route to the jail as clearly as if he had it laid out in front of him on a mission plan. It could be done. He could do it.

And then went cold. He could get to Sandburg, and Simon, Daryl, Henri, Megan… but not with Rafe. It was them or him.

***

They came for Rafe. Jim followed him with his senses until they took him into the shower block, and then dismissed him from his mind. Rafe was dead, as good as, and there was not a thing he could do about it; not if he was going to save Sandburg and the others. Let's not get all Star Trek about it, he told himself. Sometimes the good of the many outweighs the good of the one; you do the math.

So he waited patiently, practicing calmly at using his spider sense, and at switching between the spider sense and sentinel sight.

Then it was time, and they came for him, only there were four of them - two within range, but two hanging back, and pointing guns. Nil chance. He submitted to having the cuffs cut off and his hands re-cuffed behind his back. Then they blindfolded him. And then the two gunmen went away.

Because he was blind now, and safe, right? Easy to handle.

So he let them take him outside onto the parade ground, and then, when he was sure there were no more locked doors between him and his goal, he took them out swiftly and silently with a stamp to the foot and a knee to the head, and then a flying roundhouse kick that sucker-punched number two, who foolishly behaved as if no-one could do that without sight of their target.

And then he was running, keeping to the shadows, around the edges of the parade ground, heading for the cellblock.

The door gave way to straightforward forward momentum; and the guard gave way to an elbow to the neck that left him clawing noisily at his throat as he died, a distracting irritation while Jim tried to unhook the keys from the wall and let himself into the cell block beyond.

Only now someone had found the bodies, and there was running and yelling, out at the edges of his radar range, and it wouldn't be long before someone guessed where he would be headed.

"Jim!" they all said, a ragged chorus of relief and welcome. Shut them up, get them with the programme, fast. He unlocked Sandburg's cage and yelled "Ninety seconds!"

Sandburg tossed the keys to Connor and clawed at Jim's blindfold. Jim shook him off, closing his eyes firmly against the return of normal sight in favour of the wider perimeter his spider sense gave them, all the while waiting impatiently for his partner to cut off the riot cuffs with the dead guard's bowie knife.

"Sandburg: gun cabinet."  
Sandburg moved, for once obedient, and started to strip the gun cabinet of weapons and ammunition. Connor had unlocked Brown's cage and was working on Simon and Daryl's.  
"Sandburg: ammo. Pack that file drawer. Brown: front door. Three  
trucks. Kill two of them, start up the third. Connor: you’re shotgun. Sixty seconds. Move!"

Brown was outside, working on the trucks, ripping out wires at random, awkwardly one-handed. Sandburg stuffed the metal filing cabinet drawer with the boxes of spare ammo. Connor tried to help Simon but Banks was already limping out of the door of his cell, Daryl in his arms. She took one look, and moved fluidly out towards the trucks, carrying the weapons.

"Thirty seconds."

Jim crumpled up the guard's porn magazine and tossed it in the drawer with the ammo. As Simon reached the truck and Henri and Blair helped him load Daryl, Jim took one glance around with real sight and, satisfied, tossed a lighted match into his improvised file-drawer bomb.

"Sandburg - you drive. Connor in back. Fire on anything that gets close. Simon, Daryl, Brown; stay down."  
He had two he could rely on, and three wounded. Five rifles and five pump action shotguns, ammo for each. But there were dozens of Kincaid's men, and they must have arms elsewhere. He counted seconds in his head. They had to be out in ninety seconds, he judged, or they wouldn’t be getting out at all.

There was the CRUMP of an explosion, and the metal drawer packed tight with ammunition finally reached critical heat and exploded. Jim closed his eyes and reached out with the spider sense to confirm that most of Kincaid's men were now running towards the cell block. But there were still some with their wits about them, and the man with the spit-shined boots was directing them, and there were other trucks.

Sandburg drove them up to the perimeter fence, floored it, and crashed them through; relishing the chance to be truly, creatively naughty, as happy as a big kid in a sandbox.

The same irrepressible bubble of good humour seemed to hit them all at once; they were out! There was still a long way to go: where the hell were they, for a start? Connor unexpectedly tossed a cellphone to Simon. She must have liberated it from her recently-deceased guard, Jim realised, thankful to have someone reliable as his wingman. He heard Simon’s voice, hoarsely calling down the local police, the state militia, the FBI, ATF and National Guard down on the militiamen’s heads. But none of that would do them any good if spit-shine got his boys organised into one of the remaining trucks in the next few minutes.

Sandburg said "Jim, did you ever watch The A-Team?" and Jim realised Sandburg’s mischievous streak wasn’t done yet. He thought A-Team… and realised this week’s bad guys had been holding him in an empty gas tank, and where did they gas up their trucks, and just what were all those oil drums doing stacked against the perimeter fence anyway, and wasn't that *exactly* how the A-Team always used to escape from mad militiamen? And before he had even completed the thought he found he was hanging recklessly out of the truck window with his butt on the sill, only his legs and feet still inside the cab, and he was looking back over the roof of their truck with one of the rifles held steady against the roof and he was squeezing off a round and closing his eyes and...

There was another of those quiet CRUMP sounds and suddenly the night sky was alight with flame. And none of the others could see, as Jim could, that they were home free, but Sandburg was high-five-ing him anyway as he slid back onto his seat and the others were chanting the A-Team theme song and he was laughing like a hyena as he sang along with them.... "Da da-da Dah! Duh duh Dah!"

And they drove off into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, Henri."  
The hospital had reassured them that Henri Brown’s injuries were painful but not life threatening: a broken nose, and a bullet wound in the shoulder. The bullet had shattered a couple of small bones on its way out and so the joint was immobilised in a complex plaster casing. It was the broken nose that had given him the two puffy, rainbow-hued black eyes. But they all knew it was worry about his partner that had left him morose and uncommunicative, lying flat on his back staring at the ceiling. Sandburg had, like everyone else, sat with him for the statutory hour making cheerful chatter without hearing him say a word in response. For three days now Brown had blanked them all out; Sandburg alone had persisted beyond the second, polite, visit and still hadn’t, so far, received a syllable by way of reply.  
Which was all about to change.  
"There’s news."  
Blair waited a beat - a long beat - for the reaction he was seeking. But there it was, in the end. A spark lit Brown’s eye, his attention caught at last. His face slowly came alive, as if granite could melt, and the complex blend of hope and terror revealed behind his eyes was heartbreaking. Blair smiled, letting him see the news before the words were said.  
"It’s good news, Henri. He’s alive. They found him."  
The broken nose wasn’t so bad, didn’t make too much of a mess of his face, not any more. He sat up at once like a man resurrected and a smile of uncomplicated joy split his face and outshone his shiners. Suddenly he looked ten years younger, and Blair began to believe what the doctors had been saying, that Brown could leave any time he chose to. It was scarcely credible that, seconds before, he had looked to be at death’s door.  
"Where? How?"  
"In a hollow under the banks of a creek, a few yards outside the perimeter fence and a couple of hundred yards upstream. He’s in hospital, H., but they say he’ll be all right. It’s just exposure."  
Well, hypothermia, but let’s not get technical, Blair decided.  
"They’re bringing him home tomorrow; they want to keep him in the local hospital tonight. So. How’s about we get you out of here, ready for the party?"  
"Sounds good to me."  
"I’ll go find the doctor, see about the paperwork?"  
Henri nodded and Blair gave him a thousand-kilowatt smile before turning on his heel. After all this time, an anthropologist-observer ought to understand the cop code better, almost, than they did themselves. So Blair knew that, much as he needed the release, there was no way Henri Brown was going to cry his happy tears in front of a civilian.  
***  
There was something slightly skewed about Blair Sandburg’s world. He had expected it to right itself once Rafe had been found safe. But that wasn’t it. Hell, three days ago he had expected it to right itself when they got back to the loft, after all those hours with all those different agencies before the paperwork on their kidnap was done. It was driving him nuts, like an itch that you just can’t scratch. He knew, intellectually, that it was a common reaction to life-threatening experience. That the sky wasn’t really a little bit bluer than before. And food didn’t really taste a little bit sharper, sweeter, more… real. It was just… reaction. Nothing to be worried about. Normal.  
Yeah. Normal.  
He looked out onto the balcony. Jim was standing out there again, eyes closed, head cocked to one side, reaching out with this new "spider sense" thing he’d developed.  
They had covered it up with a little fast talking and a lot of flim flam, and left the others - not to mention all those men in Kevlar - with the impression Jim’s rescue had been some kind of Ranger thing. Blair wondered, vaguely, how they got away with it. The man had incapacitated his guards and made his way through a camp full of armed militiamen to rescue his comrades, *blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back*. Was he the only person who thought this was fucking incredible?  
3D black and white radar, he called it. Blair’s mind kept, involuntarily, coming up with ways they could test this new super-sense, establish a baseline of range and depth. But Jim wouldn’t test it, wouldn’t even talk about it. But he kept going out onto the balcony and closing his eyes. Blair wondered what he was "seeing" - in 3D, black and white, through walls.  
Jim stalked back into the room and over to the stereo. He rooted around in the back of the CD collection till he found the one he wanted, put it into the machine, and then went over to the kitchen. The stereo started playing The Who, softly. Blair fought back a laugh, a sob. Nothing strange going on here, he told himself. Except *Jim* is playing "I can see for miles"???  
He watched Jim chopping spring onions with a flourish of the enormous butcher’s knife he favoured and told himself, for the thousandth time, that there was nothing going on except his own nervous system coming down from a nasty adrenalin overload. Cold turkey adrenalin junkie, that’s me, he thought.  
And then watched Jim stab at the butcher’s block, missing the spring onions as often as he hit, more mashing than cutting them, until he had reduced them to a botched mess of translucent green which he then slid, pell mell, into the wok.  
Now that wasn’t normal.  
Really.  
Normally, Jim would chop veggies for the wok with a kind of animal grace that Blair would rather have died than admit to coveting; a precise use of applied force, reducing each raw vegetable to stir-fry ingredients of precise, uniform size and shape, all the while using the minimum effort and maximum speed, like some kind of zen sushi-master on speed.  
And now, no, it wasn’t Blair’s imagination; he was doing a sloppy job that mangled each ingredient into pulp. They were going to have lumpy stir-fry. Which wasn’t, of course, the end of the world.  
But it wasn’t normal.  
See?  
Something was… weird. He put it no stronger than that. Weird and wonderful is my world, he thought wearily. Because he was the Shaman of the Great City, and it looked like this one was his to carry.  
***  
Megan Connor had phoned her office, her uncle in Melbourne, her old school friend in Waikiki, and a woman she had once met backpacking in Europe who now lived in North Wales. She ticked off the last name in her address book and looked around. Her long distance phone bill was, no doubt, into three figures, but she had caught up on all those things you mean to get round to, and spoken to all those people you mean to say hi to, and could bask in the glow of a job well done.  
She looked around her apartment critically. She had thrown out the trash, and then impatiently thrown out three threadbare cushions she was never going to re-cover, a pan with burnt-on tortellini she was never going to scour clean, and a jacket with three buttons missing, that she was never going to re-habilitate. Life, she told herself, is definitely too short.  
And then she sat down and put her head between her knees as yet another wave of nausea hit her and she let herself feel and remember, the way they had looked at her like a crawling thing, and the way their eyes had stripped her, and the way she and the others had all been, separated and helpless, and the sick knowledge that if they had come for her, there would have been nothing she, any of them, could have done to stop it…  
And then she stood up, looked calmly around, picked up her gun and two fresh boxes of ammunition, and headed for the door, meaning to go out to the range for the rest of the afternoon.  
"Blair!"  
"Megan."  
Silence.  
"You want something?"  
"No. I just … is anything …"  
"Wrong?"  
"Not wrong. Weird."  
"Weird?"  
"Yeah. Weird. I was just wondering… if you were feeling, you know. Weird. At all. That’s it."  
"Sandy, you’re just suffering a little PTSS, like the rest of us. Post traumatic stress syndrome? You know? Men with guns drag you out into the middle of nowhere and threaten to kill you. It gets a little much, for anyone."  
Blair looked at her piercingly and she realised she was being patronising.  
"Jim’s been acting weird ever since we got back, and I know my own reactions are.. off. I was just looking for a reality check, I guess. Whether it was just us."  
She ushered him into her apartment and sighed, releasing the tension she hadn’t realised she still felt in her shoulders and neck. She looked assessingly at the anthropologist in her living room. He looked - like he always looked, except for his black eye, which was now at its multicoloured height, and the hair. Somewhere in the last couple of days he had found the time to get it properly cut, after that grinning ape had hacked off his ponytail…  
"How are you doing, Sandy? Really?"  
He grinned companionably at her.  
"Comparing bruises? You’ve got a pretty good purple jaw thing going there yourself. I’m fine, apart from the adrenalin hangover. But I was thinking."  
"Oh no!"  
"Funny girl. I was thinking, when Rafe gets back, we ought to reconvene poker night. Get the gang together and play out the game. So. Make potato salad. Tomorrow night, our place. And, this time, no uninvited guests."  
***  
Daryl is alive.  
It chimed through his head like a litany.  
Daryl is alive. Daryl is alive. Daryl is alive.  
His boy was hooked up to an oxygen mask and there were tubes and needles going into him and monitors on him that made machines beep and lines go up and down on screens, but he was alive. Simon Banks sat in the same chair where he had sat for the last three days and took a moment to stretch out his neck muscles. But this immediately reminded his back and thighs that they were stiff too, which brought his attention back to the way his eyes were full of grit and his stomach was rancid with vending-machine coffee. But Daryl was alive.  
Sandburg had once explained his theory of flight to the bullpen audience. See, planes aren’t actually aerodynamic in any natural way, not like a bird or a bat or a butterfly, he’d said. Planes are just big lumps of metal, like frying pans, and you wouldn’t expect a frying pan to fly, would you? No, what keeps planes up in the air is the belief of the passengers. Sandburg claimed he couldn’t read or watch the movie or listen to music while he was on a plane, because he needed the whole of his attention to levitate the plane.  
Sandburg’s theory of flight was what was keeping Daryl Banks alive. Simon was going to sit in that chair and watch those machines go beep and *will* his son to live. And god help the man who tried to make him leave.  
The others kept coming by, one by one, like they were on a rota or something. It ought to be… He looked up, hand going automatically to the gun holstered under his jacket. Yep, Blair’s shift.  
"Hey, Simon."  
"Sandburg."  
"How is he?"  
"Still here."  
"God, Simon, I know. But I spoke to the nurse, and she said he was out of danger. Which is great."  
They had told him that, too, but then Daryl was still lying there with machines doing his breathing for him. Simon concentrated, hard, on making sure his son stayed breathing, giving Sandburg maybe half an ounce of his attention.  
"And I know you’ve been too busy to speak to Joan, but I asked Rhonda to call her, Simon. Because he’s her son too. I hope you don’t mind."  
Somewhere there was a still, distant, new point of pain. Tears pricked at the backs of his eyes but otherwise nothing changed.  
"And she’ll be here in an hour, Simon. And then I want you to come with me while I take you home. And I want you to have a shower and change your clothes because, well, Simon, those are the ones you were kidnapped in, right? And, frankly, at this point you’re a bit gross. You really don’t want Daryl to be woken up by your, er, fragrance, do you? And the hospital would have thrown you out by now if you didn’t have a gun, and you don’t want to have to shoot some hospital security guard minimum wage-slave over it either, do you? So you can let go now. It’s over. Daryl is safe, Rafe is going to be OK, the bad guys are in jail - we won!"  
Seems to be my day for waking up statues, Blair thought with an inner flash of humour. Simon sat back and then took a deep breath - and then let it go. All of it. Blair could actually see the tension drain out of him and his attention return to his surroundings.  
"Sandburg - I swear, one day…"  
"I know, Simon. But not today, eh?"  
"They really said he’s out of danger?"  
"Yes. You didn’t imagine it. And you heard them say he’s only unconscious because they sedated him, because of the breathing tube? They’ll start bringing him round tomorrow morning."  
Simon’s eyes were suspiciously bright. Blair was right, then: he really had been too out of it to take the information in the first time.  
"So I’m going to go down to the canteen now and get you another cup of that godawful stuff they use for coffee. And then Joan will arrive and we can get you to a shower. And then, tonight, you’re coming over to the loft."  
"I am?"  
"You are," Blair repeated firmly, "because it’s something we all need to do. We’re going to get the whole gang together, and we’re going to play poker, and eat Megan’s potato salad, and drink a six-pack apiece, and celebrate the fact that we’re alive. All of us."  
Sometimes there was something about Blair’s voice that made Simon think this Sentinel/Guide thing wasn’t just hot air after all. He looked up and managed the first smile since… well, since the last poker night. And said, as everyone did in the end,  
"Yes, Blair."  
***  
"Let go of me!" Sandburg fought the grip on his arm that bent him double. "I mean it, let me go! Jim! Jim!!"  
It was the man with the spit-shined shoes, the militia leader, and he was holding Sandburg with his arm twisted up behind his back and he was bending him forwards, bending him double, and Jim was looking up at him…  
Looking up at him? Sandburg’s eyes were black like coals and he was looking down at Jim with a look of terror on his face that went straight to Jim’s bowels and he was screaming now, "Jim, help me! No!!! Help me, Jimmy!!"  
And then he woke up.  
Jim sat up, gasping for breath, heart pounding as if he had been running a race. He wiped sweat from his brow and automatically reached out with the spider sense, looking out of the darkened room and down through the walls and ceiling, to the room where Sandburg was sleeping peacefully.  
Dream.  
Just a dream.  
He couldn’t work out where he had been, in the dream, that Sandburg was bent over but still looking *down* on him.  
Anxiety dream. Let it go. He took a deep breath, and then another, and lay down.  
Let go. I am letting it go. It was only a dream.  
And then he got up, and went to stand on the balcony and look out over his city, his tribe. And, if he stopped to look in on his sleeping partner on the way, well, who would blame him?  
***  
There was a fire burning on the hearth, because Blair found he had an atavistic need for this to be a fire ceremony. He had sold it to Jim by pointing out they could open the balcony doors and let in the night air and it would be nice to have both the fresh air and the warmth. They would sit in a circle anyway, and if the fire was traditionally in the centre of a circle, well, this particular ceremony would have to have a different focus.  
The air should really have been purified with sage, but the smell of the chilli dogs and two unscented candles would have to do. He would have preferred scented candles but there was no way he could get them past Jim. He had, however, managed to splash himself with astringent cologne before his partner could bellow forbiddingly through the bathroom door.  
Fire, circle, incense, check.  
He wouldn’t last long trying to get peyote or any of the other dreamwalking drugs past a roomful of detectives, but he had bought imported European extra-strength beer and chilled it; they had lite beer but somehow it had all been carelessly left at room temperature. Megan, who was designated driver, claimed she’d never tried Dr. Pepper before anyway, so she was in for a new experience too. Mind bending drugs, then, check, he grinned to himself. All he needed now was his tribe, and then the Shaman of the Great City could do his thing.  
He put a careful selection of background music into the CD changer in lieu of drums: some world music for later, but first some quiet jazz-rock fusion to start the neurons firing in the right brain. He took a moment out to wonder again at Jim’s sudden urge to listen to seventies rock at what must, to sentinel hearing, be the equivalent of ear-bleeding volume. PTSS? But Jim’s reactions to stress weren’t usually like this. Morose, yes. Normally he would repress anything that bugged him till the lid was screwed down so tight on his emotions it popped out in other ways - that tooth-grinding, jaw-muscle-clenching thing, for example - but usually you could literally *see* that. This time there was no stress in his body; he looked limber and relaxed. So why was he listening to The Who? Why was he losing hand/eye co-ordination? And why was he spending so much time out on the balcony doing his spider thing?  
Blair had been agog when Jim had first explained, in the usual Ellison style, this new ability. "Yeah, well, I tried the bat trick and I'd been in the dark a long time so now I can see through walls and stuff, yadda yadda, let's not go ON about it, Sandburg..." There was something about this new ability that scared Blair hollow. And the minute everyone was okay he was getting Jim into a lab, doing some proper tests.  
Walking wounded, that’s us, Blair thought, surveying his setting for the last time before the actors arrived. Well, let’s hope airing the wounds will help them heal.  
***  
"… and that, my friends, is a Royal Flush."  
"Hairboy! You wouldn’t be pulling a little anthropological sleight of hand on us, would you, by any chance?"  
"Hairboy?" Jim ruffled his partner’s hair, what was left of it, affectionately. "Don’t you mean, Crewcut-boy, H?"  
"Sharp, Ellison, don’t cut yourself, will you? Anyway, I've got enough hair left for three crewcuts." His hair was, indeed, collar length. He shook it, pointedly, at his partner. "Which is at least three more than you, Tonsure-Boy. Hey, Megan, pass the potato salad again. This stuff is great."  
"Thanks, Sandy. Your chilli dogs aren’t bad, either."  
Blair raised his beer bottle in a silent toast of acknowledgement.

"At least the potato salad made it here in one piece this time," Henri Brown said. Blair kept his poker face intact but inside he was grinning ear to ear - Brown had given him the opening he’d been waiting for all night.  
"Yeah, Megan. You were outside, right? So what happened?"  
***  
It was a safe-house, so she’d followed all the rules automatically. Used an unmarked car, come by a different route, including an unobtrusive series of turns to check her six. She knew she was good. No-one had followed her; she was confident in her abilities. But Rafe and Brown were on duty inside, so once she’d passed the guys on duty at the front desk she’d let herself relax, thinking about the poker, and hadn’t even seen the guy who’d cold-cocked her outside the apartment. Someone had taken the Tupperware out of her hands and then, while her wandering mind tried to work out why she didn’t recognise the face, the huge fist had come toward her like a cartoon Bluto, impossibly large.

***  
"…and most of the time, all I could think about was how the buggers had probably eaten my potato salad as well!"  
They leaned back from the table and laughed appreciatively as Megan turned the tale of her captivity into an anecdote.  
"Yeah, well I’d like to make them some ptomaine salad they wouldn’t forget," Henri Brown said, frowning.  
"Salmonella," Jim offered.  
"No, arsenic," Blair argued. "You just get sick with salmonella. H., am I right, or am I right?"  
There was no need to ask Brown to tell his story. One glance at Blair in the seat to his right, where usually his partner would sit, was enough to put him into the right mind-set.

***  
Brown wasn’t going to be careless, not with those guys who’d tried to snatch Sandburg still at large, but he was still looking forward to poker night. He and Rafe were there already, and Sandburg, of course, and as soon as the next shift arrived they would be off the clock and able to concentrate on being parted from their money. Not that they would ever suggest Blair cheated, you understand, but somehow the grad student played poker just a *disturbingly* little too well.  
So they were relaxed. Megan and Jim were on their way over; Simon couldn’t make it this time. They had been listening to Sandburg talk about some researcher at the university who’d managed to get someone to fund a study into…  
"Beer drinking and porn? You HAVE to be making this up!"  
"Naw - told you, Rafe, if you think creatively enough, life will hand you everything you want."  
"More like, if you’re devious enough, you can get some sucker to pay for just about anything."  
Someone knocked at the door. Brown pushed Blair behind him and pulled his piece as Rafe went over to do the checks. But it was only Simon, so he relaxed and started to put his gun away, until he looked at Simon’s face.  
"I need to see your weapons. Both of you."  
Simon sounded like a zombie.  
Rafe, automatically obeying his captain, had already handed over his piece before the voice in Brown’s head screaming "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" could get itself in gear. Everything went into slow motion, as Simon took Rafe’s gun hand and twisted it behind his back and three guys barrelled in through the open door behind Simon. Brown levelled his piece and then wham! Fire hit him, pain hit him, the floor hit him and he realised he had been shot. He was lying on his back, and they were going for Blair.  
Simon - how had Simon gone bad? - *Simon*, god, had dragged Rafe out of the room. Brown struggled to get up. Their job was to protect Sandburg, dammit, but Sandburg was standing over him and whack! One of them hit Sandburg, and he went down against the wall. Brown could see his gun, staggered to his feet, reaching for it, inches, millimetres…  
Pain! Pain, pain, blackness, blindness, nothing…  
He woke up in a car, hands bound, eyes covered. Someone was groaning, and then he realised it was him and managed to shut up. His nose was broken, he recognised that sick grinding sensation. What had happened to the others?  
"Sandburg?" he said softly.  
"Not here," Rafe’s voice said equally softly.  
"Just the three of us," Megan Connor’s voice added. "Sandburg, Simon and Daryl in another car. You OK, H.?"  
"Quiet, bitch," said another voice. Then there was a noise like a fist hitting flesh and Megan made a grunting noise and then was silent.  
Simon. And Daryl. Was *that* how Simon had come to betray them?  
But there was worse to come. They had been driven in enforced silence for a space of time and then the car stopped. Henri heard his partner Rafe make a sound, a muffled protest as if something had been shoved in his mouth, and then abruptly the comforting warmth of his partner’s knee next to his was gone.  
"Rafe?" he said sharply.  
Something hit him.  
"Don’t you worry about the real policemen," the gloating voice said, calling him a name he hadn’t heard in years except in nightmares. "You and the bitch should worry about yourselves."  
***  
"Yeah, real hot on bad words, weren’t they," Henri mused.  
"Well," grinned Blair, "you know what they say about that. It’s like on a scale from one to ten. Your ordinary damn-and-blast is one, and the kind of language those assholes used is at ten."  
"Yeah," said Brown, intrigued in spite of himself, "so?"  
"Well, the bigger the number, the smaller the-"  
And the room erupted in laughter.  
***  
"No, don’t ask me. I got dumped into this empty gasoline storage tank with Rafe, and then I got out and came looking for the rest of you. And I still want to know how come Rafe and I, as members of the 'master race', got the stinking pit, and the rest of you 'alien'-types got the de-luxe accommodations!"  
"Ah yes, the wall to wall carpet!"  
"The dancing girls!"  
"The Mongolian barbeque!"  
"Sandburg!!!!"  
There was a brief pause in the dialogue whilst the Shaman of the Great City dug himself out of the pile of cushions and other non-lethal flying objects.  
"What? What did I say?"  
"Only you, Sandburg, would think that a - what? Mongolian? - barbeque was the height of luxury."  
"Man, I can tell you’ve never eaten Mongolian. I had this yak meat dish once… you use the liver, see, because…"  
There was a chorus of groans, and some of the flying objects were retrieved to be hurled again, but suddenly there was a noise none of them had ever heard before.  
It came from Simon Banks.  
It was - well, it was Simon Banks, sobbing.  
***  
They fell silent for a moment, no-one knowing what to do. Jim stood up and moved towards the balcony. Henri leaned back in his chair and concentrated, real hard, on putting together another chilli dog. Megan looked at Blair, and then at Simon, and then got up to get another Dr Pepper from the kitchen.  
A shaman’s work is never done.  
"It’s OK, Simon," Blair said softly. "We know. They had Daryl. You had no choice. No-one blames you, right? You know that."  
"I gave you to them, Sandburg, don’t you get it? I betrayed you. One of my men. All of my men. I betrayed you all."  
"No."  
"Yes. Yes I did."  
"You had no choice."  
"No choice? I’m a cop! There’s always a choice."  
So kindness wasn’t going to do it.  
"Yeah, OK." Blair said harshly, "I agree this was all your fault: you’re a bastard and should be punished. What do you say? How’s about, oh, someone puts a bullet into your only son. Would that be punishment enough, do you think?"  
"Sandburg."  
"No, Simon, don’t ‘Sandburg’ me. You say you did wrong. I don’t happen to agree, and nor does anyone in this room, but let that go. You say you did wrong, well, what do you want to do about it? Sit there and cry about it, or put it right? You want to atone? Is that it? Well I’ve got some bookshelves at Rainier that need building. You give me two days hard manual labour, and I’ll call it even. Will that make you feel any better, or do you want me to punish you some more?"  
"Bookshelves?"  
"Bookshelves. Hey, if you prefer, there’s this African tribe that has a great atonement ritual where you cut off your own…"  
"Sandburg, more information than I need." But he was smiling now; they all were.  
"Hey, I can build your bookshelves, Chief, if you want," Jim said carefully.  
"You find your own atonement, Ellison," Simon said sternly, "this particular piece of carpentry is all mine."  
***  
It had been a limo. Even now, the poor boy he had once been made him look up at a limo. Only, this time, when he looked into the back of the limo he saw the darkened one-way glass had been cracked open a few inches, and through the few inches he could see the terrified face of his son Daryl, a gun pressed against his temple.  
While he was frozen for that instant of disbelief, one of them had come up behind him.  
"Get in the car, Banks."  
Keeping his hands in plain sight he had clambered in next to Daryl.  
"You all right, son?"  
Daryl whimpered, wide-eyed.  
"We told him we’d kill you if he spoke, so I think you should just move on," the smooth-voiced man behind him said. "Now, take us to Sandburg’s safe-house."  
"You know I can’t do that."  
Bang.  
There was no warning, the silenced weapon already in the man’s hand had fired the instant Banks had spoken.  
"Take us to Sandburg’s safe-house. Right now."  
And he had.  
Daryl was bleeding, but it didn’t look too bad. There was an entry wound, and an exit wound, and they were both small and contained, at waist height, and he tried desperately to stem the bleeding and at the same time to remember what vital organs were at waist height.  
Then at the house, they made him go in, and they told him what to say and what to do, and they made him disarm Rafe and Brown, only Brown didn’t go for it and they put a bullet in him too. He was outside, holding Rafe for dear life as his man struggled and he could hear them, inside, and he heard them shoot Brown and hit Sandburg and Rafe was still fighting him and he twisted Rafe's arm as if his life depended on it because Rafe's life *did* depend on it and at last he’d cuffed him and then the mercenaries came out and blindfolded him and led him away.  
And then they brought out Brown, and finally Sandburg, both with their wrists tied and their eyes covered, too. And none of the militiamen spoke to him, Simon. Judas. And he stood on the stairs a moment, quite alone.  
They put Sandburg in the limo with him and Daryl. He didn’t see what they did with the others. But it didn’t matter. He had failed. Utterly. Completely. Failed his men. Failed his duty. Failed his son. He clutched Daryl to him and looked at Sandburg’s blind struggle against the hands loading him into the car. And it was a relief when, finally, they covered his eyes too and merciful darkness fell.  
***  
"Where the hell is your partner, Brown?" Jim said irritably.  
"On his way, I guess," Henri said easily.  
"Have you spoken to him yet," Blair asked.  
"Yeah, just for a couple of minutes. He was pretty out of it, but determined to get out of hospital. He managed to get them to sign him out but the doc said I had to keep him in bed for at least a week when he gets here. They have this patient transport thing, not quite an ambulance, and he gave this address as where he was to be dropped off, and then I'm taking him home with me for the week. His doc said he ought to stay in the local hospital but you know Rafe. I swear, the man has more lives than a cat."  
"Amen to that," Blair said loudly, giving his shamanic blessing. He looked around his circle, satisfied. Brown and Connor were looking fine. Simon had brightened up considerably. He felt... energised, himself. Now if only Rafe would get here and they could fix whatever it was that had gone on between him and Jim while they were in that tank.  
They switched to telling tall tales about Rafe's exploits for a while, whilst Jim sank further and further into morose withdrawal. Now would have been the perfect time for him to have told them about his decision to leave Rafe to die while he saved the rest of them. He thought he had worked out, by now, exactly what Sandburg was trying to do with his little shamanic circle, and it would have been a relief to have brought this one into the light and let it go.  
But what would Rafe have to say, when he arrived? Jim mentally cringed at the thought of facing the man he'd betrayed. No-one had had a gun to his head, like Simon. He'd just counted the odds, coldly calculated, and set Rafe aside as expendable. How was he going to look him in the eye? Hell, he could hardly bear to look at himself in the mirror.  
He got up from the table again abruptly and went out onto the balcony. Eyes firmly shut.  
***  
"Now remember," Henri Brown admonished them sternly, "he's just out of the hospital, and he's not supposed to leave the house at all for a week. So he's coming by for a half hour, and then you and I, Ms Designated-Driver-Connor, will take him home and leave these bums to their dirty dishes and Simon snoring on the couch. Half an hour, get it? Not a millisecond longer."  
"Yes, Henri," they chorused meekly.  
"And don't tire him out when he gets here."  
"No, Henri."  
"And don't make him talk about it if he doesn't want to. Yes, Sandburg, it's you I'm looking at."  
"Yes, Henri."  
"He's here," Jim said abruptly, stepping back into the room from his balcony vigil. He tripped over the threshhold and righted himself with a clumsy grab for the wall.  
"Woo hoo! No more of this *excellent* beer for you, Ellison!"  
Blair said nothing, but worry gnawed at him. When did Jim start getting drunk on two beers? Come to that, when did Jim start tripping over his own feet, drunk or not?  
***  
Rafe was pale and had bandages on his wrists and hands but he was here, he was alive, and that was enough, for all of them. His face split with an enormous grin when he was enveloped in a bear hug by his partner and he waved greetings at Simon, Blair, Connor. And then looked at Jim.  
"I wanted to thank you, Jim. You saved my life, man, and I won't forget it."  
Jim looked stupefied. Wile E. Coyote at the point he realises he's been walking several feet since the cliff stopped. Connor gently reached out and pushed his jaw, literally, shut with a finger. "Drool is *such* an attractive look on you, Ellison, you old charmer," she teased.  
"Jim?" Sandburg said gently.  
"I did... what?"  
"Saved my life. My god, when I heard the explosions, I've never been so terrified in my life. But I did exactly what you said..."  
***  
"Psychological intimidation," Jim explained patiently. "They've kept us down here to show us our place. Literally, keep us in the dark. So when they take us out, to get Kincaid for them, they're going to want to keep us subdued, tractable. So they'll separate us, take you first probably. They said they'll let us shower and shave and then give us back our clothes. You can expect them to supervise that closely - fully dressed guards intimidate a naked prisoner. Maybe some innuendo..." Maybe some sexual assault, he realised, but it wouldn't help to get thinking that way.  
"What you have to do, is realise that meekness is a weapon," Jim continued fiercely. "You look meek and cowed and whipped and you do whatever they say, and if they want you to yell you scream like a girl and if they want you to cry you bawl like a baby, until they think you're so weak and meek they take their eye off the ball. And then you break their bastard necks..." And suddenly Rafe realised that this wasn't theoretical, Jim hadn't learned this on some *course*, it was something he had felt and experienced and *done*.  
Jim was right, too. They made Rafe strip, and stood around and watched, and he stood in the shower and closed his eyes and hugged his meekness to himself, a weapon, something he would use to disarm them in their turn.  
They let him get dressed at last, and then put soft restraints on his wrists - wouldn't want the authorities at the Federal prison spotting any marks, they'd explained - and then covered his eyes. They put him in a car, with a guard, and made him wait. After a while the guard got out, and then, after a while longer, he got back inside, smelling of tobacco.  
"You wait," Jim had said. They would come for Jim, go through the same rigmarole with him. Count the seconds in your head, Jim had advised, but he lost count, feeling his heart pound faster and faster. Breathe, he told himself. Slow and easy.  
"After a while, when I see an opportunity, I'll make a break and go for the others. We'll need a diversion. That's your cue. There'll be something - a noise, an explosion if I can rig it - and you have to find a way to put down your guard."  
The way Jim said "put him down": kill him, he meant.  
But the guard was out of the car, sneaking another smoke, when the explosion came, and so Rafe took his chance, fumbled for the car door and was out and running.  
Blindfold, in the dark, he was on level terms with the militiamen, so he told himself. Jim had run through the layout of the camp with him. There was only one door to the shower block, and if a line walking straight out of the door was pointing to twelve o'clock, then the direction Rafe needed to go was at ten o'clock. He'd kept it carefully in his mind while they took him to the car, and he knew exactly where he needed to run when he scrambled out.  
He couldn't hear anyone following him - the stupid guard had run towards the explosion, it seemed, judging his prisoner too meek to move from the car where he'd been put. So he ran, as fast as he could scramble in the darkness behind the blindfold, using shuffling steps trying to gauge his footing.  
He hit wire. Yes! The perimeter fence, right where Jim had said. "It's only sand and scrub," Jim had said, "and the fence doesn't go down deep. Six inches, max. You lie down full stretch and wiggle, and wriggle downwards and across, and you can kind of tunnel under. Scramble through the fence and you're home free." So Rafe lay down, and wriggled and wiggled and wormed his way under the fence, scraping his face when he tried - and failed - to rub off the damned blindfold, and then took a moment, after he had scrambled his way upright again, to put his back to the fence and orient himself again. Forwards, from the fence, about twenty yards, there should be a small creek, Jim had said. The ground was rougher now, and he dropped to a shambling walk, not putting his weight on the front foot until he had felt gingerly forwards and tested out the ground under his feet. His hands were clamped tightly together behind his back and the blindfold was tied so tight he felt like his head was going to explode.  
"They won't expect it of you, of anyone. You run away, blindfold and with your hands behind your back, and they won't even bother to look. They'll figure they need to chase me, and Sandburg and the others, and that they can round you up any time they choose. So you leave the others to me, and you get yourself hidden before they realise they're fresh out of hostages..."  
He stumbled into the creek, but it was scarcely ankle-deep and, hell, he knew he needed to get his shoes wet this time. Head upstream, Jim had said. He stood a moment, getting his bearings, feeling the flow of the water against his feet. They turned decisively left, and moved on.  
He felt like a spider crawling up a window, completely visible, ready to be plucked off at any moment. But all he could do was play out the hand he'd been dealt, right to the end.  
Jim said to hug the right hand bank, said he'd seen some overhangs, curling over and forming small concealed "caves" that might, just, be big enough to hide Rafe from view. He didn't crawl into the first one he found, or the second, or the third, because Jim had said not to. It was the fifth one that he rolled himself into, finding that Jim was quite right, it narrowed to a space that was a tight fit, but then broadened out again. He felt like he'd rolled into his own grave. But he was dry, and hidden, and far enough back from the bank that a cursory glance might not find him.  
He couldn't do the trick of bringing his hands round to the front because the soft restraints were too deep, keeping his arms tightly locked together from wrist half way to elbow, so he had no space to maneouvre. But he could do something about the blindfold, and did, taking hours of writhing to rub the stubborn piece of cloth off against the rocks, taking half the skin off his cheek with it.  
***  
"And after that, all I had to do was lie there. Good as a vacation!"  
They laughed, tension draining out of them at the thought that it hadn't been so bad; they hadn't left Rafe behind for anything bad. And if they all knew the reason he hadn't been found the first day, or the second, was that he was wedged so tight into the tiny space that, after he'd wriggled himself deeper trying to rip off the blindfold, he couldn't *get* out, well, it had all turned out all right in the end.  
Jim's face had cleared somewhat when he learned that Rafe bore him no ill will after his ordeal - thought of him as a saviour, in fact. But it wasn't only Sandburg who noticed that Jim hadn't mentioned his conversation with Rafe at all, as if he hadn't even remembered it had happened.  
Poker night broke up, as Henri looked pointedly at his watch and he and Connor ushered Rafe to the door. But as he was saying his goodbyes Rafe took Sandburg to one side.  
"How's Jim doing, Blair, really?"  
"I don't know, Rafe. He seems OK..."  
"Yeah, well, grief can do odd things to you. You keep an eye on him, you hear?"  
Blair looked at him, blank, mind racing. Rafe didn't seem to notice anything wrong but good humouredly let Henri mother-hen him into his coat, only turning back at the last minute to ask "Hey, Blair - did I miss the funeral?"  
***  
Breakfast was over, and Simon was gone back to the hospital to be there when Daryl awoke. The dishes were washed. The sun was shining in Cascade. They were both still on enforced sick leave but feeling physically fine. Jim was out on the balcony, eyes closed, spider sense at max., completely content with the world. Apart, that is, from the nagging feeling of Blair moving around the loft behind him, definitely Up To Something.  
"Jim?" Blair said tentatively.  
Jim opened his eyes and came, reluctantly, inside. "What's up?"  
"Sit down for a minute. I need to ask you some stuff."  
They sat at opposite sides of the table, like opponents, like an interrogation. Jim raised a sardonic eyebrow.  
"What did you do, Sandburg? Put *your* leftovers in *my* Tupperware?"  
"Funny, man. I'm serious, Jim. I need your help here."  
"Well, what?"  
Blair took a deep breath. "You remember last night? When Rafe left?"  
"Yeah, what of it?"  
"He and H. and I were talking just outside the door. Were you, you know, listening in?" He tugged at his ear, meaning, were you using sentinel hearing.  
"Sandburg! I don't listen in on your private conversations. You know that. Is *that* what this is all about? Because you should know by now..."  
"Yeah, yeah, you only use your powers for good. Believe me, I know. I just wondered if you'd caught any of what we said. But you didn't. OK. I can work with that."  
"Work with what? Sandburg, this isn't another one of your tests, is it? Because I have to tell you, I'm not in the mood for it right now. OK, so I can see around corners with this bat trick thing, but it's no big deal, all right?"  
"Jim, you can see around corners, through walls... my god, Jim, you found a hiding place for Rafe that was good enough to keep him out of harm's way while Armageddon was going on around him, and you gave him detailed enough instructions how to get there that he could find it blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back! You put down three militiamen to come and rescue the rest of us, and *you* were blindfolded with your hands tied behind *your* back. Is it just me, or is that absolutely the most amazing thing anyone ever heard of???" He was waving his arms about again and Jim closed his eyes, quietly amused at the way the black-and-white Blair lost his arms completely in favour of a blur, like a hummingbird's wings.  
"Jim! STOP it, you're scaring me man!"  
He opened his eyes. Serious talk, incoming. Well, he had done his best to head it off at the pass.  
"OK, OK, Sandburg, I give in. Say whatever it is you want to say."  
"I need you to work with me here, Jim."  
"Work with you on what?"  
"Look - when Rafe got here, last night, you were scared, right? Scared of what he might say?"  
"How did you know?"  
"Jim! I know you, OK? But what I mean is, *why* were you scared?"  
Jim hated talking about this kind of stuff. And Sandburg knew he hated talking about this kind of stuff. And Jim knew that Sandburg knew... hell, there had to be a good reason why his partner was putting them both through slow torture like this.  
"Because I thought he'd hate me, for deciding to leave him behind."  
"But he didn't, right?"  
"Right..."  
"Because, from his point of view, you'd saved his butt by telling him where to go and how to stay out of the way while it was all going down."  
"Yeah..."  
"Jim, don't you think it's odd, that he remembered all of that and you didn't?"  
He couldn't stay there, at the table, any longer. He stood up and started to pace, closing his eyes to navigate by the spider sense.  
"You have a kind of a history, is all I'm trying to say. Right? You repressed finding the body, seeing the murderer, when you were a kid. And you repressed most of your time in Peru, with Incacha, right?"  
"So? What are you saying? That I repressed the conversation with Rafe? OK, maybe I did. So what. So shoot me. I forgot, OK. Sometimes that just happens."  
Blair put his head down and banged his forehead, very gently, on the table. Bump, bump, bump.  
"Jim, you didn't *forget* talking to Rafe, you *repressed* talking to Rafe."  
"Forgot, repressed; semantics. And I'm always up to Some Antics."  
He grinned at his partner and wiggled his eyebrows but Blair was beyond being side-tracked by Lethal Weapon quotes.  
"Jim, you repressed. And you repressed... other stuff too."  
He was pacing, his eyes closed. He paced out to the balcony and stopped a moment, feeling outwards over his city. All was well...  
"Jim!"  
He opened his eyes. Blair was standing toe to toe with him.  
"What?"  
"You zoned, man. Well, almost. Kind of. Listen to me, Jim. There's stuff you need to remember, and you're trying to avoid me helping you remember. I need you to sit down at the table and meditate with me."  
Anger rose in him, slow burning rage, and he let some of it show in his posture, in his voice.  
"Bells and chanting? Going to burn some sage? Don't think I didn't know what you were doing last night with your little 'shamanic circle'. Next time you want to mumbo-jumbo, include me out, OK?"  
"Jim, I'm trying to help you. I mean it. There's something you're repressing that you need to know."  
"Will you quit pushing me, Sandburg. If I'm 'repressing' something, maybe it's something I don't *want* to remember. Did remembering Incacha do me any good? Do him?"  
He could feel his jaw muscle jumping and he could see Blair zero in on it, and suddenly he couldn't bear the air on his skin and the eyes on his face and the sound of Blair's voice and he had to get out of here before he started losing it now, now, now...  
He was out the door and halfway down the stairs before his brain caught up with the way he had shouldered Blair aside and as he climbed into the truck and drove blindly away the words "fear-based responses" floated freeform into his brain.  
***  
He pulled into the garage at the PD and then sat for a moment, trying to let out the anger, let it go. OK, Blair was trying to help. And, yes, he was an annoying little squit, but he was one of the good guys, and that instinct to pound him was something he was going to have to repress, right here, right now. I am, he thought proudly, the king of de Nile, and then added for good measure, a mental "see, this stuff does have its uses." Anthropologist-pounding is a no-no. He stuffed it firmly into one of those little mental Boxes Into Which We Do Not Look. And then breathed easily, and locked the truck, and walked away.  
He took the stairs, needing the animal burn of muscles working at stretch, jogging up the stairs because he could, because he needed to, because he wanted to feel, to feel and not to think. And he was on the last flight, had nearly achieved blank-brained nirvana, when Rhonda called out to him.  
"Jim!"  
She was two floors above him, leaning over the handrail, looking down, and suddenly she wasn't just leaning over, she was being held by someone behind her, twisting her arm, forcing her down, and her face distended impossibly and she was screaming "Jimmy! Jimmy! Help me! Noooooooo......"  
And he opened his eyes and was on a couch in the break room with the shades drawn and Sandburg was looking down on him.  
"What happened?"  
"You saw Rhonda on the stairs and keeled over. She fetched Taggert and then called me. Taggert brought you in here - no-one else saw anything. She's a smart woman; you should thank her."

Yeah. Major Crimes Officer of the Year collapses in a faint like a girl... not good for the image. But what the hell was all that...  
"Before it happened. She... There was..."  
"Can we go back to the loft first? I think you need to deal with this, and I think maybe you'd feel better about it on home territory." Blair was a smart guy, even if he was a little irritating, at times. Jim took in a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh.  
"So if I lose it, what are you going to do?"  
"Send for the men in white coats? Hell, Jim, I don't know. We just need to get through this. I think you should probably let me help you meditate and get to the memories yourself, but there's another option. Rafe told me what you repressed: should I just tell you?"  
He had to pace, again. Blair looked at him like he was a dangerous animal, like he was wondering whether to send for the men with the big nets.  
"OK, let's do it." What other choice was there? "How's this? We go back to the loft, you lock up my piece, in your room somewhere, and we do your mojo thing. But you keep between me and the door, and if I start, you know, turning 'throwback', you get the hell outa Dodge, Chief, and call for backup."  
Blair grinned. "Is *that* what you're worried about? It'll be OK; you wouldn't hurt me."  
Jim thought about how he had shouldered him aside in the urgent need to get out; and said nothing.  
***  
"Fuck it, just *tell* me already."  
He couldn't sit still through the candle lighting/music selecting part of the mumbo jumbo. He had insisted Blair "hide" his piece before they started and, OK, so he knew it was wrapped in a sweatshirt inside the pillowcase in the pillow that was tangled up in sheets at the *bottom* of the bed, but at least it would take him a while to disentangle it and Blair would have a chance to run for it if he went loopy-lou on him.  
"Sit!"  
Not shaman to sentinel, but trainer to dog, he thought with a grin.  
"Woof!" he said obediently, and sat.  
So there were the drums, low, in the background, and the candles that stank almost as bad as that sage stuff of Naomi's, and they sat cross legged at opposite sides of the coffee table with their eyes closed, until Jim peeked and saw Blair was peeking too, and then relaxed a little.  
He took a deep breath.  
"Go for it."  
"OK. So, let's go back to poker night..."  
***  
"WOULD you just RELAX, godammit!"  
"Oh, like YELLING at me is really going to help, Darwin."  
"Well you'd make a fucking GURU yell, Jim. The more I tell you to relax the more you clench that jaw muscle and fight me!"  
"I told you already I AM N O T CLENCHING MY J A W MUSCLE!!!!!"

They stood glaring at each other across the low table for a second longer, and then Jim felt his jaw muscle, involuntarily, jump. And saw Blair's lip, twitch. And then they were laughing; laughing till Jim's diaphragm ached and his eyes filled with tears, and they were both on the ground now on opposite sides of the table, literally rolling on the floor. And out of the hysteria Blair's voice said,  
"What kind of gun was it?"  
"A forty-five," he heard himself answer without thinking. And it was there, unlocked, and he was lying on the floor laughing and crying and gasping for breath and unguarded and it just popped open and flooded out and carried him away...  
***  
His face must have showed his contempt for the whole idea. Funny, that. He thought his poker face was better. But the idea, the idea that his father actually thought he would go along with Kincaid's militia and their racist claptrap if they only sat him down and "explained" it to him properly...  
He saw the man with spit-shined shoes read his answer in his eyes and saw his father instantly degraded from follower to game piece. And then their hands were on him again and he was being hustled through the door at the back of the gym, his father gripped by another of the guards and hustled with him, protesting loudly. There was a hole in the ground - an old storage tank? It reeked of old gasoline or oil. They had the hatch already open and they pushed him and he fell, landing like a cat, looking up at his captors.  
There was someone else already in the pit, someone bound and gagged and blindfolded, as he had been. He moved, awkward, his own wrists still bound behind him, and helped Brian Rafe off with the blindfold and gag.  
"As you see," the terrorist's voice came, calmly, from above, "we have the means to secure your obedience. Several means, in fact." He dropped something at Jim's feet. A badge. Simon's badge. And it was followed by another, and then another. Brown's. Connor's. He looked up at them, enraged. "Oh, and let's not forget this."  
Something else landed at his feet. Something soft. Hair? A hank of hair. Human hair. A ponytail of hair, cut off in one brutal swipe, the distinctive metal clasp Sandburg had used on it that morning still holding it together.  
"But I fear you still doubt our seriousness..."  
"None of your hostages is disposable," he warned fiercely.  
The man smiled. "Oh, I think we can spare *one*, don't you? A little demonstration?" He looked down at Jim and suddenly, carefully, grabbed his father's wrist and twisted his arm up behind his back, bending him forwards so he was leaning over the edge of the pit, looking down at Jim.  
"What are you doing? Let go of me. Jim... Jimmy! Stop him!"  
"Let him go!" Jim said loudly, warning. "You lay a hand on him and I'll kill you, I swear."  
And he was bringing up the gun to bear, and his father was begging and pleading now, "Jimmy! *Help* me! Jimmy!! Noooooooo!"  
And the man looked Jim carefully in the eye. And smiled. And pulled the trigger.  
***  
"...blood," Sandburg was saying.  
Something important, something about blood. He was lying down, he knew that. On the floor, between the sofa and the coffee table, and his eyes were wet and his stomach hurt and he had banged his head on something, maybe, because he felt dazed and sore.  
But he knew. Everything.  
Blood.  
He and Rafe, in the pit, had been spattered with blood and brains and he had looked up and seen the shattered wreck that had been his father's... that had been his father, and he had lost it, completely. They'd sluiced them down and taken away their clothes and he'd been kind of unconscious, kind of catatonic, the whole time, until he woke up with his head in Rafe's lap, with the whole thing locked up into one of those little mental Boxes Into Which We Do Not Look.  
And he wished he could close it back up, and never look into it again.  
***  
It occurred to him to wonder, later, where Blair's neat black suit had come from. At the time all he registered was: roommate - check. They travelled in the first car, with Steven and Sally, just the four of them, and all he could think about was how appropriate Blair looked with his hair cut short and neat and his glasses perched on his nose, like a real professor. He and Steven and Blair looked like a matched set, like Men In Black. Sally cried the whole time, quiet, miserable tears, but that was OK. Someone ought to cry.  
There were the relatives, people Steven had unearthed from his address book, people they never saw from one year to the next, but they all lined up at the appropriate times in the appropriate places. Steven's secretary saw to most of it, in the end, with a little help from the funeral director.  
So there were enough cars to make a respectable show, moving slowly through the quiet morning to the graveside. The uniforms were a surprise. Simon was there, with Daryl quiet and pale beside him in a wheelchair. Joan stood, disapproving, thin-lipped, behind him, but she had a black coat too, and she'd bought a hat, the box-fresh smell of its black dye heavy on the air. But next to the Banks family, the rest of Major Crimes had turned up in the uniforms they wore to honour one of their own. Jim swallowed a lump that seemed to have developed in his throat and Blair gave him a brief, piercing glance which he acknowledged with a half-smile.  
Carol had flown in from San Francisco, which surprised him. She had called in on her way from the airport, neat and proper in a black shift dress and coat that both looked new. He hadn't thought she'd even been particularly fond of his father and had said so, but she'd just looked at him with that particular blend of exasperation and affection they both did so well since the divorce.  
"Jim," she'd said calmly, "I'm not here for William: I'm here for you."  
So there they were. The minister said the words. They threw handfuls of dirt. There were flowers, and a flag. Birds sang. In the movies, funerals always take place in symbolic rain. Cascade did its usual contrary symbolism, and the sun shone. Steven and Sally had made food, up at the house, and Jim hadn't objected. It gave them both something to do, some way to get through the time. But he needed a moment, just a moment, to be alone, to stand at the graveside, and really be in the moment.  
Blair, misunderstanding, came up and stood with him, shoulder to shoulder. He closed his eyes and tilted his head downwards.  
"Oh, man, don't," Blair said. "That... isn't him. He isn't here."  
He opened his eyes and smiled gently.  
"I know that. That wasn't what I was doing. And, besides, it's all gone now, the 'super sense' thing."  
Blair's eyes showed he understood. In the end he always understood, everything.  
"These days," Jim said carefully, "when I close my eyes, all I see is darkness."

The end.  
by Sheffield  
Originally posted May 2001


End file.
